


Keep your friends close...

by fadesfanfic



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, Korriban, SWTOR, Sith Academy, Sith Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 19:57:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12801207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadesfanfic/pseuds/fadesfanfic
Summary: Vanji Ar'kass is a proud Sith Warrior, but she's about to pick up an annoying sidekick during her Korriban trials.





	Keep your friends close...

**Author's Note:**

> Vanji is not my character, she belongs to NotSummer.

Vanji Ar’kass starts out on the planet of Korriban.

It’s colder than she expected, given that it’s a desert. Which is fine for her. She’s adapted to cold - though she can’t let anyone else know that. As far as the Sith and  _ especially  _ Overseer Tremel are concerned, she’s as human as any of the Sith this Academy’s seen in the past forty years, before they started allowing alien acolytes. 

She hefts her practice swords. The edges are blunted, but when she grasps the activation plate, energy linings in the blades spring to life, giving it the feel of a lightsaber - at least, as close to the feel as any non-plasma blade can get. Overseer Tremel had told her to replace it, though. Inside that tomb lies a warblade, a sword someone like her  _ deserves _ . 

She makes her way to the tomb, alternating between knocking the klorslugs back with the Force and hacking at them with her training swords. Because of its aforementioned dullness, sometimes it’s work to kill them and their red blood splatters on her white outfit - but that’s fine. It suits her. Let’s people know not to cross her.

She passes an Imperial soldier soliciting an acolyte for help - something about klorslugs killing people in the tomb - and rolls her eyes. Professional soldiers, having to beg for someone to protect them from animals? The Empire might as well have armed drunken cantina patrons, for all the good their soldiers’ training was doing. 

The acolyte he’s begging is an alien. A rattataki, by the looks of it. He’s wearing tattered slaves robes and holding a simple staff, and it’s obvious he just got off the shuttle.

_ Not sure how they expect slaves to keep up with people who’ve been trained for this their whole lives _ . Though it doesn’t really matter - if they can’t keep up, they’ll die, but that’s no skin off Vanji’s nose. It’s the way the world works. 

The soldier continues explaining his predicament to the acolyte - former slave -  and Vanji scoffs. She puts her hands on her hips, temporarily sheathing her swords, and says “I wasn’t aware the klorslugs on this planet came armed with blasters and durasteel armor.”

“Pardon, my Lord?” the soldier says. 

The acolyte looks her up and down curiously, eyes resting on her double swords. Fine. Let him drink in what true power looks like. 

“The klorslugs,” Vanji explains, speaking slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable for maximum condescension. “They must have some type of superior equipment, and that’s why you can’t kill them. They certainly can’t have superior  _ training  _ since they’re animals. Or are you being outwitted by mindless beasts.”

“I already told this acolyte, my Lord, they reproduce too fast - ”

“An excuse if I’ve ever heard one,” Vanji snaps.

The soldier grimaces a little, but doesn’t say anything in reply. Good.

“I’ll get on the egg chambers,” the acolyte says. 

But when they leave the soldier alone, he doesn’t. He seems to follow her. She’ll be cutting her way through klorslugs (they don’t reproduce quicker than  _ she  _ can kill them) and he’ll be behind her. After a bit, she gets annoyed enough to bring it up.

She turns to face him, holding a sword in each hand. “Stop leeching off my success,” she says. 

The acolyte smiles slightly.

“You’re following me,” she elaborates.

The acolyte shakes his head. He leans against the wall of the tomb, much more casual he should be. He should be afraid of her - afraid of the tombs. He was only just a slave. 

“I’m not following you,” he says. “We’re just going the same direction and - well, I’m not going to  _ stop  _ you from doing all the hard work.” 

“It’s not hard,” Vanji says. “It’s easy.” 

The acolyte shrugs. He looks around and points out a klorslug. 

“Is  _ that  _ one also easy to kill?”

Vanji eyes it. It’s bigger than the others, but really that doesn’t matter. Still, she’s not going to let herself be goaded by this freeloader.

“You tell me,” she says, and gives him a quick hard shove towards the animal.

The acolyte laughs.

Vanji frowns. 

“Here, buggy, buggy, buggy,” the acolyte says, his body tensed in a fighting stance as he circles the slug. 

It attacks. It shoots some type of poison ball at him that he dodges - unsurprising, given Force users have heightened reflexes. She continues watching.

He makes a couple stabs with his staff, aimed at the creature's face. Not expertly used, but not an amateur either. He must’ve learned from somewhere.

The fight continues at a reasonable pace - but slower than she’d have liked, and he finishes off the creature with the Force. It senses as if he’s getting used to his powers still - he tries to conjure the energy up once, drops it, tries again, and then finally succeeds shakily. 

He could use work. But not totally bad.

She decides to not kill him for following her.

“Now, I’m going to go finish off that egg chamber,” the acolyte says.

“Have fun fighting the battles of those too weak to win their own,” Vanji says. 

The acolyte swings his stick over his shoulders and rests his hands on it, which totally is leaving his stomach open to be stabbed. “Nah, you’re thinking about this wrong,” he says. “The soldiers are weaker than us, sure, but they’ll make sure to mention who helped them in their report. And I having people in the military know we’re awesome is something we could use you know - for future missions.”

“Stop saying ‘we’,” Vanji says. She sighs. “But I see your point. Their failure is our opportunity.”

“Exactly!”

She grins a little. At the very least, it should be a good opportunity for violence.

 

**

 

After the last of the klorslugs is dead in the chamber and the bomb is prepped, the acolyte says “Those were some pretty sweet moves.”

Vanji looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “I know,” she says.

After a bit, she adds, “You’re not so shabby yourself.” 

“Thanks,” the acolyte says. He grins and swings his stick as he walks. “You know, we gotta stick together?”   


If this is some appeal to friendship, the contents of her stomach are about to become the contents of the sidewalk. 

“That is a decidedly un-Sith sentiment,” she says carefully.

“Yeah, well you can’t be Sith all the time,” Nassath says. “I thought I was going to be the only one.”   


Vanji narrows her eyes. What in the Force is he talking about? “The only  _ what _ ?” she asks, letting coldness slip into her voice so he knows to play his next words very carefully. 

“You know… the only alien.”

_ What? _

She wheels on him and he jumps back. “You  _ are _ ,” she says.

He is. He doesn’t know. There’s no way for him to know, right?

“Sorry,” Nassath says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought it was kind of obvious.”

“ _ Nothing  _ is obvious,” Vanji says through gritted teeth. “Because you are insultingly wrong in your premise.”

“‘Insultingly’?”

Vanji steps forwards. “Yes, it is insulting,” she says. She feels heat rush to her face. If Overseer Tremel found out - well he only  _ wanted  _ her to keep Vemrin, the halfblood, out of the Academy. Her being an alien would change her status here - maybe even send her back to Balmorra!

Nassath rolls his eyes. “Well excuse me for not immediately jumping on the SIth-are-great-and-everyone-else-sucks bandwagon. I just thought it was obvious because of you know - the hair, the eyes, the punching things --”

She didn’t use her hand to hand did she? She tries to mentally replay the fight.

Ugh this is stupid!  Echani are the best hand-to-hand combatants the galaxy has ever seen, but she has to hide it. But no. Those are the rules. She can’t get ahead of herself. One has to follow the Sith’s rules if they want to make it anywhere.

Something this poor acolyte will find out soon enough.

“Stop talking,” Vanji orders.

Nassath shrugs. “Hey, I just figured you’d be a little better to hang out with than all of the other guys cuz of that. But I get it. I’ll go find someone else to talk to.”

‘Hang out with’? Who even speaks like that? But she doesn’t have any time to critique that because -

He’s blackmailing her!

That conniving leech! 

Someone else to talk to indeed. He’s going to tell them all about her!

She can’t let that happen. 

She could probably kill him - she looks around. There’s no one in eyesight, but there might be some in earshot if he shouts loud enough. Could he do it? Would he waste his last words blowing her secret?   


She can’t take that risk. 

“I get it,” she says. “We can - er - ‘hang out’”

“Get what?” he asks. He somehow managed to arrange his features into a look of genuine confusion - nice try! She knows what’s really going on.

She doesn’t force him to say his blackmail out loud, though. She wouldn’t want anyone hearing it on accident. 

She sighs and starts to the next rooms of the tomb. She’ll play along - at least until she can figure out how to remove his influence over her situation. 

He follows her, smiling slightly as if they’re actually friends, and he isn’t aware of what just transpired. But she knows he knows. And she won't take her eye of this eye off him. If he's going to have information he can blackmail her with - regardless of whether he's conniving enough to use it - she's going to make sure he's in stabbing range at all times. It's something every one has to learn as they enter Sith politics. _Keep your friends close..._


End file.
